1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to wireless telecommunications, and more specifically, relates to an apparatus and method for identifying last or previous talker in a push-to-talk system on a wireless network.
2. Description of the Related Art
Technology advancement has made mobile telephones or wireless communications devices cheap and affordable to almost everyone. As the wireless telephones are manufactured with greater processing ability and storage, they also become more versatile and incorporate many features including the direct radio communication capability between two or more individual handsets. This direct radio communication capability is commonly known as the push-to-talk (PTT) or “walkie-talkie” feature that allows a user with one handset to communicate with a predefined set of members of a group without dialing a destination telephone number.
In one type of a PTT system, a handset uses one single frequency for both upward and downward communications with a remote server, while in a normal wireless communication a wireless telephone uses two frequencies for communicating with the server, one for upward and one for downward communications. The PTT system requires the person who is speaking to press a button while talking and then release it when they are done. Any listener in the group can then press their button to respond. In this manner, the system can determine in which direction the signal should be traveling. When a user makes a call to a receiving party or a group of receiving parties using the PTT system, the user's handset first makes a request to a remote server. The remote server verifies that no other party is using the communication channel and the channel is available then assigns the channel to the user. The user's message is received by the server and the server duplicates the message for each and every receiving party. The server may not need to duplicate the message if it is capable of broadcasting the message to all receiving parties. After the message is transmitted to every receiving party, the channel is released and ready for use by other parties.
In another type of PTT system, cellular technology is utilized to connect the group of communication devices. Conversely, a normal “walkie-talkie” style two-way radio will only operate if the radios are within a certain distance of each other. Systems using the cellular telecommunications to implement the PTT feature can communicate anywhere within a service area specified by its service provider, typically a large urban area, or even nationally.
Generally, in a communication through the PTT feature, the identity of a speaker is not identified and the recipient must guess by the speaker's voice. And in PTT systems where the identity of a speaker is properly identified, the identity of a speaker is easily lost where many members participate in a PTT communication group and the identity of a speaker is quickly over written by the identity information of the next speaker. Therefore, the present invention is directed to a system that enables the identification of the last speaker in a PTT system.